New ESSAYS QUITE OFTENNEW STORIES AND SONGSEVERY now and then

We figured that if we wanted advice, it would be a good idea to write to an emperor. We’ve checked out a lot of your stuff, and you seem really smart and wise. Because of that, we’d like your advice on something that’s really bugging us.

We’re black cats, okay? This means that what’s supposed to happen, when we cross someone’s path, are bad things. We’re really into reading about natural disasters, and we know that, because we’re black cats, we’re supposed to cause them. Everything we read and everyone we speak to agrees that this is what's supposed to happen.

The thing that really bugs us is that we’re just really bad at bringing our family bad luck. They pick us up and pet us, and they just seem really happy. Then, and this is really the bad part, good things seem to happen to them.

And what bothers even more is that, well, we’re really, really glad that good things happen to them. I mean, when they scratch us behind the ears, we start purring, because it feels really good.

It gets worse. These people live in a really, really nice house, and when we walk around and take naps in this house, we really like it.

I mean, we know we shouldn’t be feeling this way, but we’d really be upset if the house caught fire. We keep feeling that, because we’re black cats, we should cause the house to catch fire, and be glad when that happened. Then it would be like when all those buildings caught fire in the Great Chicago Fire of October 8th, 1871, The Great Seattle Fire of June 6th, 1889, or The Great Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin, largely forgotten by history because it happened on the same day at The Great Chicago Fire.

Like we said: we black cats read about natural disasters, and know about about them. We know, for example, that fire is not the only thing bad that could happen to the house. Even though the house is in New England, it could collapse due to an earthquake, one similar to that which tore through San Francisco on April 18, 1906. Or it could be like the one that rocked Alaska on March 27th, 1964 (magnitude of 9.2, the most violent earthquake ever to strike North America).

Though we read about disasters, though, we still are really worried about the fact that we don’t want any of them to happen. We don’t want anything bad to happen to our house. And when our people feed us—and stroke us behind the ears, which is awesome—we don’t want anything bad to happen to them.

In short, we’re really bothered by the fact that not only do we seem to be total washouts at brining bad luck to our people (such as the Galveston hurricane of August 27th, 1900), but we’re really glad that none of this has happened.

We’ve lived there for a couple of months, crossed their paths many, many times, and so far…nothing. Sorry, but we’re glad about that.

What we’re trying to say is something that’s really wrong for black cats to say: we’re find ourselves actually being happy that we’re making them happy. We’re really worried about this, because we’re sure that when we go to school, people are going to laugh at us because we’re so bad at bringing bad luck to our people, and that they’re going to think we’re downright weird for being happy that we cause good stuff to happen to them.

So we’re writing to ask you: are we failures? Are we weird? We’re really worried that we’re these things.

We’re totally looking forward to you writing back to us. We really love your writing, and we find ourselves being really glad that you make your person so happy. And yes, we know it’s really weird for us to be writing this.

Anyway, thanks for reading this.

Sincerely,Tora and KumaMinisters of Luck and Fortune68 Seminole AvenueP.S. Right now we’re reading about The Dust Bowl. It’s really cool, but we don’t want it to happen to us, and are really glad that it hasn’t. We know: we’re weird.